Touchstone first and second graders research beavers

Sunday

Mar 17, 2019 at 9:20 AM

Did you know that beavers have orange teeth, underwater refrigerators, and they can’t stand the sound of running water? First and Second Graders at Touchstone Community School, including Riley Russo from Millbury, can tell you all of this, as well as so much more about these industrious rodents.

For the past four months, these 6 to 8-year-olds have been immersed in a study of the North American Beaver. Students have researched using elementary informational texts, videos, field trips to Grafton Conservation Land, and close observations of both a taxidermy beaver loaned from Broadmeadow Brook Conservation Center and skulls loaned from The EcoTarium, according to a press release.

Students wrote realistic fiction tales as well as stories depicting social skills problem solving (e.g. what to do when you’re frustrated with a classmate), all with beaver protagonists, according to a press release. They’ve been acting out these stories with their hand sewn beaver puppets as well as decoupaged beaver masks. And they also put themselves in the webbed feet of a beaver, thinking about the beaver’s abilities and needs, to build a dam and lodge prototypes in the school’s I-Lab and classroom block area.

This integrated study came about because students in the class (known as the Burrow) were interested in studying a local animal that creates underground (or underwater) tunnels.

While students were able to take part in most of their study on their school’s wooded eight-acre campus, they also spent some time doing research on Grafton Conservation Land near George Hill Road. There they observed chewed and felled trees, and a lodge in the distance.